The Book of Joe: Who are the 'Chiefs' of Baseball?

In this episode of 'The Book of Joe' Podcast, Joe Maddon and Tom Verducci discuss how the Chiefs have had so much success with Patrick Mahomes.  Could a team like the Dodgers have similar success year after year?  Tom compares the winning in the NFL against how a team has to win in baseball. In other news, MLB umpire Pat Hoberg was fired after an investigation revealed his connections to gambling.  Joe gives his thoughts on betting being so parallel to sports.  Plus, Tom wants Joe's opinion on the lack of reading in today's schools and society.

The Book of Joe Podcast is a production of iHeart Radio.  

#fsr

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
The Book of Joe podcast is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey there, welcome back to the Book of Joe podcast.
Joe Madden and Tom Verducci here and Joe, I'm gonna
call this week why not a super Bowl edition of

(00:25):
the Book of Joe primarily a baseball podcast, But we
have no boundaries here. How does that sound to you?

Speaker 2 (00:31):
I'm always about zero boundaries, brother.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Love it. Hey. You know obviously the NFL and the Chiefs.
Big talk this week, Chiefs trying for a three peat. Here.
My question for you, Joe, is a lot of talking
baseball about the Los Angeles Dodgers. Can the Dodgers be
the next Kansas City Chiefs playing for three consecutive championships?

(00:53):
I want to dive into that. But off the top
of your head, what do you think?

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Well, it comes down to do you have Mahomes on
your team?

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Somehow? That's really what it is.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
And I guess I don't know if you want to
say show ay equals a Mahomes. But the difference, for me,
the biggest difference is that in football that one position dictates, dominates,
explains whether you're gonna be good or bad, or can
be good or bad. Or gonna be bad, because it's
that's incredible, how that sport.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
Is driven by one position.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
It just is, I thought, and back in the day
basketball may be driven by centers at that time as
much as anything. And then baseball, I've always thought that
starting pitching drives the engine. But that doesn't happen anymore.
So if you could tell me that show Hey equals
one Mahomes or they're you know, they're they're equal partners,
there's a chance. But based on that alone, as long

(01:43):
as this kid stays well, they're going to be back
there again next year. What he does and how he
does it is truly remarkable. You know, you look at
him and how he moves, it's nothing like really out
of the ordinary. It's just that while his ability, even
though the different arm angles he's able to throw from,
he doesn't make a whole lot of mistakes, and if
he does, he comes back from them. He seems to

(02:04):
be a ferocious He looks like the baby face ferocious
baby face kind of a dude, and he reads great.
Don't get me wrong, he is great, but Andy Reid's
not as great without Patrick Mahomes. It's like Brady and Belichick,
same thing. So it's such a one positional driven sport.
I don't think the Dodgers can do what the Chiefs
are doing based on that thought.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
Yeah, there's some other reasons, but I totally agree with you,
and I cannot make the argument as much as I
love showey Otani that he is the Patrick Mahomes of baseball.
You just as you well said it. There's no other
position in sports, not even goaltender in hockey, who can
dominate a game in the outcome of a game like
a quarterback can. And you're right, Andy Reid has a
great advantage over every other coach because if you notice,

(02:45):
you know he can call plays knowing he's got entire
trust in his quarterback. He can put the ball in
the air, and what should be a run out the
clock situation, he can put the ball in the quarterback's
hands to run make decisions. That frees up the Chiefs
to have a wide array of play calling. You see
that time and time again. They've run one hundred and
seventeen plays in this postseason and turned the ball over once,

(03:07):
none by Mahomes interception. Watching him play, he freelances to
an incredible degree. Right, we all don't know all about
the different arm angles. He's like el Dukeay on the
football field. But if you notice, try to think of
a time where Patrick Mahomes tried to force the ball
into coverage. He just does not do it. He doesn't

(03:28):
throw late down the middle, you know, he doesn't force
the ball to double coverage. He just makes really really
good decisions with a whole lot of athletic ability. So
I agree the Chiefs would shock me if they're back again.
I mean, who knows if they're gonna win this week.
It's always hard to bet against Patrick Mahomes. You just
figure when he's got the ball at the end of
the game, like Michael Jordan last shot, you know how
the movie ends. But yes, it's the quarterback defines everything.

(03:51):
I think it's eight of the last nine Super Bowls,
the AFC representative the quarterback has been either Patrick Mahomes
or Tom Brady. Only Joe Burrow interrupted this streak, and
it took overtime to winning Kansas City for the Angles
to get there.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
It's amazing.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, of course I don't know how this play calling
works there, but it just from Ree's perspective, it just
seems like he pulls the right rabbit out of the hat,
like on these third and shorts or fourth fourth down
in two or three yards, he'll just find the soft
spot in the defense and go to it. So that's
that's the That's where I think from what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
He's really good.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
He's able to in advance, and again this is just
through this vast many years of experience that he has.
He's able to pick the underbelly at the right time
and attack it, and I think he saves stuff for
those moments and he's very good at that. The other
thing is you're talking about trust and latitude. I think
when you have a quarterback like Mahomes, you you you know,
you have a system, of course you do. You have

(04:46):
plays and you you have you have structure, but there's
got to be some kind of flexibility to it. And
I have to believe that Mahomes feels that flexibility. I
would bet that if he goes off scripts sometimes normally
when he does, it's going to be a positive outcome.
Him and Reid would probably discuss it at afterwards and
you know, break it down a little bit, liked it,

(05:07):
didn't like it. We got lucky there. I know that
was the right thing to do kind of stuff, and
I think that's important. And in all sports you always
want to draw things up. In a perfect world, this
is what happens, but sports do not always happen in
a perfect world. Theory and reality really meet when they do.
It's it's wonderful when theory in reality come together. At

(05:27):
the end of a baseball game, while it's just like
you leave and you feel like, man, you know, I
manage the game, but I didn't really you know, I
didn't have to go off script and it felt pretty
good and it worked.

Speaker 3 (05:37):
But that's really rare.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
So I think, with having said all that, the trust
component from the coach or the manager of the players
and vice versa is really really vital and important. I
think that's where you know, Jeter and Pettit and Posada,
Bernie Williams, in that particular group of Joe Tori, there
was all that going on.

Speaker 3 (05:57):
There's a lot of.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Latitude, there's respect for the greatness of the player players,
and so you have structure, but it's a loose structure,
quite frankly, and you permit athleticism to work and you
don't get in the way of it. That's what I
see with the Chiefs. I don't know if I'm right
or wrong, but that's what I'm observing. I think there's
absolutely there's a structure, but there's a latitudeor flexibility and

(06:20):
trust involvement there. And I think that's why your eyes
are glued there. That's why these guys are always there.
But at the end of the day, it's because of
one person. Sorry, but it's that quarterback. He makes this
whole thing work.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
No, you're one hundred percent right, Joe, And I almost
think you were reading my notes before we did this podcast,
because I do think the great analogy to the Kansas
City Chiefs is the Joe Tory New York Yankees. The
Kansas City Chiefs have won seventeen straight games by one
score or less. That's an NFL record. Let's go back

(06:55):
to Joe Torre's Yankees from nineteen ninety eight until Game
seven of the two thousand and one World Series. The
Yankees went twelve zero with the postseason and games decided
by one run. And I know there's a school of
thought out there it's largely true that one run outcomes
are random. It's really just the luck of the draw,

(07:16):
if you will. But when you do it time and
time again, the way that the Yankees did, there's something
to it, just the same way with the Kansas City
triefs now Joe Torre had Mariano River at the end
of the game. That certainly helps if you were in
one run games, right. But I think you hit on something, Joe,
about the structure of these teams. They're so well disciplined,
and at the same time you noticed never satisfied. You know,

(07:41):
the Yankees had a core of the same guys generally,
but they also made sure that they brought in people
almost on an annual basis who had not won before,
whether it was David Wells or Roger Clemens later on
Mike Pussina. But because of the core ford that you
mentioned there, I think they were never satisfied with having won.
And I do detect that in the game today it's
so hard to win one. There's a little bit of satisfaction.

(08:04):
I'm sorry, it's there. I'm not saying guys let up,
but the same kind of drive and hunger is not there.
It was always there with the New York Yankees, Joe,
I know you ran into them. You actually with the
Angels played the Yankees really well. But at least in
the window from ninety six to two thousand and one,
in the postseason, the New York Yankees went fifty six

(08:25):
and twenty two. That's a seven eighteen winning percentage in
what Billy Bean famously called a crap shoot the postseason.
And in that run, the record in one run games
was seventeen and three. That is not a crap shoot
when you do it time and time again and again.
That's the analogy I see with the Chiefs is the

(08:46):
Yankees dynasty under Joe Tory.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
Well, as you began setting that all up, I just
wrote my little note here. Rivera equals Mahomes and Mahomes
equals Rivera when it comes down to that one run situation.
I mean Rivera, out of all the relievers that I've
ever seen, game was absolutely over.

Speaker 3 (09:03):
And I don't remember me.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
You probably know how many times he might have gone
more than three outs in the latter part of the
year like that. But if you had that one point
leader or a two run lead with this guy coming in,
you have much of a chance.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
Was that he was that.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
Good when he walked in from the bullpen. It had
a different feeling to it. He never seemed to be
in trouble. He was always able to get out your
best hitter, and if your best hitter was left tenant,
he really had no chance because the way that cutter
worked and came in on the hitter's hands was indescribable.
The advantage was he really wanted to send up a
right handed pitch hit or as opposed to a lefty

(09:36):
versus him. So, if it's seventeen and three and you
just describe with the Chiefs edition one score games, it's
at the end of the game, end of the game,
and you have to have some guys at the end
of the game that love it, don't run away from it,
don't make mistakes at that time of the game.

Speaker 3 (09:53):
And so I do. I mean, I love the core War.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
I love all that stuff with the Yankees, but I
don't think they would have been as successful without Rivera either.
He was like the He's the lynchpin to the their success.
I think, as just as though Mahomes was or is
with the Chiefs.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
Good stuff. I want to give you some stats, Joe,
about why it's also difficult, if not impossible, maybe impossible
too strong, but very difficult for the Dodgers to be
the Kansas City Chiefs. The NFL postseason is set up
to reward the best teams. I mean the Eagles and
the Chiefs got to the Super Bowl by winning two
home games. I mean, when you look at the minefield
at the baseball postseason is you're like, Wow, sign me

(10:31):
up for that, right and listen, they've earned it. They
are in home field advantage, but that's it. Two home
games and you're in the super Bowl. And home field
in the NFL means way more than in MLB over
the last four years in the postseason, home teams in
the NFL are twenty eight and eight. It's a seven
to seventy eight winning percentage in the last four years

(10:53):
in the postseason. In MLB, home teams are sixty and
sixty four for eighty four, it's a losing record in
the postseason over the last four years. So what have
you earned when it comes to home field advantage in baseball?
You've earned literally nothing.

Speaker 3 (11:10):
I've I was never concerned about that. I e.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
The sixteen World Series comes down three games to two,
go back to Cleveland for the final two games, and
I never really thought going there was a disadvantage the
disadvantage or advantages on the mound. So who's starting for us,
who's starting for them? Are my better guys hot and
are the better guys not so hot?

Speaker 3 (11:32):
Cold?

Speaker 2 (11:33):
Those are the kind of things are going to matter.
It's weird in baseball. You don't hear anything. We don't
rely on plays being called, you know, at the line
of scrimmage, whatever being in sync, whether it's offense or defense.
You don't rely on things like they rely on your
own inner thoughts and actually blocking all that stuff out.
It becomes white noise, it really does. So as loud
as it gets, there's not a negative impact on the

(11:55):
visiting team in baseball. I don't believe that even goes
back down to the Metro Dome, which I thought was
the loudest. The truck can get loud, the KINGM Dome
could get loud, but dang, the Metrodome was unbelievably loud.
I mean, I'm standing next to Soshia in two thousand
and two in the our playoffs, and I mean I'm
right next might have to scream in his ear to

(12:16):
be able to communicate. It was that loud, But it
didn't It didn't take you down baseball wife. But in football,
like I said, there's so much more communication to be
had during the game, whereas you know, of course the
fans know that they're they're polite, they helped the home team,
and they interfere with the visiting team.

Speaker 3 (12:33):
So that's that to me.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
I mean, the main difference is I think the communication
necessary in a football game compared to a baseball game
when it's in progress.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
And you've seen it, Joe as a manager, you know,
sometimes being on the road as a unit isn'tn advantage.
I saw that happen with the Texas Rangers when they're
difficult road schedule when they won the World Series a
couple of years ago and they went undefeated on the road.
It binds a team. You travel together, you stayed together,
you're at home, you have a lot of distractions, You've
got family guys, get to the ballpark different times people

(13:03):
or on different schedules. There's especially in October in the postseason,
there's almost us against the World mentality that teams I
think come together on the road.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Baseball we do play on the road a lot too,
right Football was it eight games now nine games a
year that you might be in a road. There's just
they don't even play in the preseason, as there's no
preseason games in baseball. You're so used to being on
the road. It's it doesn't it doesn't feel hardly any different.
Great hotel, you're there for a couple of days. If

(13:34):
there's a time zone impact, you're able to figure it
out and morph yourself into it a little bit. So
I think I haven't even thought about that too right now,
just the fact that we play so often on the road,
and in football too, when do you travel? I mean
that's something I used to talk to like Jason light
about here with the Bucks and Steve Khin with the Cardinals.
When do you travel, like when you have to go

(13:56):
a longer distance in football, when do you actually leave
to go to that farther away game. I've always wondered
about that. It's just you're there, you set up. I
don't even know the walk through is how that occurs.
I just think it's more of a rushed experience the NFL.
And on top of that, Thursday Night football. Okay, Thursday
night football, you play a game on a Sunday, and

(14:16):
now being a Thursday night football team with the home
game not good but not so bad. Thursday night football
game on the road. To me, I can't even imagine that,
you know what that's all about and what that feels like.
There's no time to heal. You have to accelerate everything. Now,
you got to get on a plane, get there, get
to a room, check in all this other stuff. So
I don't even know if part of it is just
the familiarity that we have in baseball with being.

Speaker 3 (14:39):
Able to be on the road more often.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Football man time zones and when they travel and how
they travel. And then again, like I said, the Thursday
night football game, and I love to know what the record.

Speaker 3 (14:48):
Is for the visiting team on those nights.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
Yeah, here's the other thing, Joe. You know, we talked
a lot about the home field advantage. But in football,
and it gets back. I think the quarterback play, the
better team normally wins most of the time the better
It does not happen in baseball. So this is sort
of a I'll admit a simplistic exercise to define a
better team in a matchup among two teams in the postseason,

(15:13):
I just went with the team with the better record
in the course of a season. You know, I know
there's different schedules, but let's use that as our thumbnail sketch.
The better team is the one that has more wins
than the other team they match up in the postseason. So,
as you know, sometimes in the NFL, the team with
more wins actually is on the road because they may
be a wildcard with more wins than somebody who won
a weak division. So we'll go better team. How do

(15:34):
they fare in the postseason over the last four years,
And in the NFL, the better team wins almost seventy
percent at the time they're twenty three and eleven in
the postseason. In Major League Baseball, same four years, the
better team has a losing record fifteen and seventeen. The

(15:55):
better team has no advantage. And as that to the Dodgers,
I know they won the World Series last year, but
for three consecutive years they were bounced in the playoffs
by teams that won fewer games and sometimes a lot
fewer games, such as Arizona taking them out. So obviously
it's something about the nature of the game. I think,
as you mentioned, Joe's, because quarterback play has become so
important in the NFL smartly relaxed their rules to encourage

(16:18):
more passing the quarterback is way more protective that he
used to be. Receivers have more freedom getting off the
line of scrimmage and getting downfield, and quarterbacks have been
really well trained. We've seen that. And it is a
quarterbacks league, there's no question about it. And it's worked,
it's become more fan friendly. Great, but it also decides
games more than anything else. Quarterback play, and you just
don't see that in baseball, the better team is always

(16:42):
at risk of being upset, whereas in the NFL it
is a rarity.

Speaker 3 (16:46):
It's interesting.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
I mean, I wouldn't even I'm just thinking as you're
going through that NFL has a salary cap, right, Baseball
does not. You look at the last season in the playoffs.
In baseball, you know, for the most part, the teams
that spend the most when you get to the playoffs.

Speaker 3 (17:02):
So you would think that there's like this.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
Up or eschelon parody in the sport, just based on
finances more than anything, whereas the NFL, the whole league
is more into parity based on how they create salaries,
et cetera. But although in the in the NFL, I'm
just gonna jump around here, quarterback play is so disparate.
I mean, if you don't have one, I don't care.

(17:25):
First of all, you're not gonna have a good record,
so you're not gonna be able to approach that level
or get to the postseason and be part of this
incredible record that they have at the end of the year.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
So I don't know.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
Does it have something to do with the act is
the baseblock to become more parody oriented just based on
the methods being utilized, and is in the NFL still
somewhat of rogan in that regard that every organization is
a little bit different and because of that, you're going
to get different outcomes because of that. But if you
don't have the quarterback, you'll just fight as well. You know,

(17:54):
you're you're You're out there to play against the other
team on a weekly basis. Eventually the Chiefs win, where
the Bills win, whomever's going to win, or the Ravens
because these guys are so dynamic at that position.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
Here's a question, and we'll tackle this after we take
a quick break. If we've talked about how the baseball
postseason now is set up so that the better team
doesn't really have an advantage, what does that mean for
the thirty teams when they build a team going into
the season. We'll talk about that next on the Book
of Joe. Of course, Joe. One of the reasons the

(18:35):
postseason is is such a crapshoot these days in MLB
is because there's another wildcard, right, they have to get
through multiple rounds. You know, it's not a one and
done situation, best two out of three. Lots of things
can happen. We've seen it all the time of the postseason.
The better team sometimes wins. I think the Dodgers were
the best team in baseball last year and they won.
That's probably the exception. So I thought about how the

(18:57):
second wildcard, especially Joe, has changed what it takes for
front offices to build a team, because I remember back
in the day, the Yankees and Red Sox, they were
going at it right and you were there with the
Rays and you were right in the middle of it,
and they were building teams. They were trying to build
teams to win ninety five games, plus going head to
head against each other doesn't really happen anymore other than

(19:18):
the Dodgers. I think there's a distance incentive at the
top of the bottom because you could play around five
hundred ball for three months, make a couple of trades,
and get yourself out of the postseason. So I looked
at what happened over the last four years in terms
of how many wins did it take to get into
the postseason, And not just the postseason, but I'm talking
about the Championship Series, So the final four you're playing

(19:41):
for the World Series. The average number of wins in
the last four years with the Championship Series teams ninety
three point one. And if you go back to twenty
years ago one to four height A Yankees Red Sox
going at it, it was ninety six point seven. So
we've gone from ninety six point seven as far as

(20:02):
LCS teams years ago to ninety three point one. And further,
if you go back to the teams that made it
to the Championship Series with ninety or fewer wins back then,
it was only two twelve percent of the teams. Last
four years, it's been eight Half the teams in baseball
that have played for the World Series or a spot

(20:23):
in the World Series have had no more than ninety wins.
So what does that mean, Well, it means if I'm
a general manager. I can be very comfortable building a
team that wins eighty six to eighty eight games, and
if I need to get something in July, I do
go out there and do it. And you're seeing that happen, Joe.
I mean, there's no reason why teams like Pittsburgh and
Seattle and Cincinnati aren't in it. For Pete Alonso, right,

(20:45):
how many it's a thirty five home run hitter, But
they're not. And we don't see teams other than the
Dodgers really finishing off their teams. Look at the Yankees,
they really don't have a third baseman. They're very comfortable
with it. They'll figure that out as the season goes by.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
Yeah, our whole thing with the Rays was I mean,
for me at that time was ninety plus. If you
had a ninety one season, at least, it always felt
good and you thought you had a shot at the playoffs.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
But it got to the.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
Point where you, like you said, you were with the
Yankees and the Red Sox in that particular group. And
even though when you're with the Cubbies first year there
we had like ninety seven, we had the second wild
card behind Pittsburgh. That year, it was just a different attitude,
like you're saying, I think there's more ability now obviously
to make adjustments during the course of the year and
still get you to the dance based on that extra

(21:33):
slot there and that that does. It's definitely going to
provide a different mindset going into the season, and like
you're almost like a wait and see kind of an
approach as opposed to like going all in or attempting
to do at the beginning of the year. So it
really comes down to the default. What am I trying
to do here? So it just sounds to me like
you explain it really well. The overarching of philosophy is

(21:53):
to just, you know, get out there and try to
get in contention and see where we're at contention wise.
I don't know, August, is that the benchmark September Maybe
like a couple of years ago at the Raves they
were like out of it until they made all those
moves and eventually get to the dance and win it.
I mean it is it's a different mindset completely, because
I know we're going into camp. You definitely wanted to

(22:15):
believe you had ninety plus in you. The help mostly
was going to be coming from your minor league system,
and you're always looking like if you held back a
Gemmer too in your minor leagues, that you're going to
bring up. Although Longo came up sooner, Frankie Rodriguez came
up later, Chris Brian came up sooner, Hobby came up
a little bit later, Hove Bayaz. But you have to
have those jewels within the system back then, whereas now

(22:37):
you're talking about actually making acquisitions when it comes down
to the trade to the deadline in order to.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
Get yourself in position.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
So all I know is that back then, which is
not that far back then, you always wanted to build
ninety plus and then really pay attention to your minor
league system because you really felt more than likely because
the Rays, you weren't going to acquire somebody of substance
that's gonna be worth a lot of money that's going
to come here and really helps. Chad Bradford was one
of the best acquisitions we had in two thousand and eight.

(23:06):
Matchad really helped us get to the World Series that year.
But for the most part it had to come from within.

Speaker 3 (23:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
So to me, Joe, the bottom line is the NFL
has the system where the better teams generally win, and
the playoff format, because home field means a lot is
set up to get the better teams through baseball, is
the opposite. There is less reward for having the best
team in baseball over six months, and I think that
has really changed the dynamic of the game. I guess

(23:33):
it's a question for a lot of people whether you
know you prefer one system or the other. If you
like variety, baseball is your game. Think about this, Joe.
In the past twelve years, eleven of the thirty two
NFL teams have played for the Super Bowl. That's only
thirty four percent, So about the third of the NFL
teams over the last twelve years have played in the

(23:54):
Super Bowl. Over the same period, sixteen of the thirty
MLB teams have played in the World Series. That's over
fifty percent. So again to me, bottom line that with
the road for the Dodgers. Listen, nobody's repeated since those
Yankees and ninety eight to two thousand. Just to get
a second one would be huge, but they have a
long way to go to be the next Kansas City Chiefs.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
Again, just getting back to your position positionality, I mean
of the NFL those guys you got to have one.
You got to have one, and if you have one,
be in the quarterback you got a shot, and if
you don't, you really do not. And then on the
baseball side of things again, I just think it speaks
to the system in place that everybody's incorporating the same thoughts, process, whatever.

(24:38):
There's no individuality within groups anymore. It's just a group
think and because of that, I think that's what you're
seeing right there where it works. So I guess to
some extent it works in a way that if you
just tank close, we can make an adjustment in a
latter part of the season. And then how does that
affect spending money, et cetera. And how does Pee Alonso
be sitting on the sidelines right now? There's a lot
of that, but I think the overaarching thing for me

(25:00):
is always with baseball. Right now, there's a sameness about
it with the NF bell outside of the quarterback position,
you still see a lot of different looks and attitudes
among the coaching and the way they play the game.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
On to another topic, because if Joe I do want
to get to something very I think it's very interesting
and I'm really fascinated gear take on something of former
NFL MVP said about competition. But you know, a lot
of people, as they always do or every week, are
betting on the game coming up this Sunday. And of
course we had one of the better umpires, one of

(25:32):
the best umpires in baseball this week who was terminated
by MLB because he was involved in violations of baseball's
gambling rules, Pat Hoberg. If you remember, Pat Guy got
to the major leagues as an umpire at the age
of twenty seven. That's how good he was. I mean,
that's unheard of full time umpire at thirty, and in
the twenty twenty two World Series he had what's been

(25:53):
the only documented perfect game called by an umpire, all
one hundred and twenty nine balls and strikes in that
game in a World Series game work in the plate
at such a young age, a perfect game, that's how
good he was. Well, he wound up, according to investigation
by MLB, getting caught up where he met a friend
who was a professional poker player who bet on baseball

(26:14):
a lot. They actually shared the same sports betting account,
and Pat Hoberg was not according to the findings, and
his own admission not betting on baseball, but his friend was.
And when Baseball began an investigation, Pat and his friend
had been communicating and keeping logs of their bets through

(26:35):
the telegram app, and they deleted all their communications as
Baseball launched their investigation. So those two major violations, One
being associated with a guy who's a professional poker player
who's betting on baseball regularly and you're sharing the same account,
and then two deleting your telegram messages to one another

(26:56):
about your betting habits. He's out of baseball now. It's
a real shame. And I don't get the whole gambling thing.
Obviously I'm a minority here, Joe. But Pat Hoberg was
betting more than two grand on you know, football games,
basketball games, whatever, you know. Over a period he bet
almost almost seven hundred thousand dollars, and he came out

(27:19):
on the negative side, of course, at almost seventy thousand dollars,
unless almost seventy thousand dollars betting on basketball, football, hockey, golf.
It's just a real shame because obviously I don't think
he's getting his career back. He had a great career
ahead of him, and now it's gone.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
I like Pat a lot, and he's as good as
you just described. I read that and I was absolutely
I don't want to say devastated, but I was really
really upset reading that, this other picture of his face.

Speaker 3 (27:47):
I remember the conversations we had.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
See Beyond everything you mentioned about his expertise on the
field as a umpire, you could talk to this guy
and I really enjoyed my conversations and you would never
really get in an argument with him, because, like you said,
he's so good and then he had such a great
way about him that he was the perfect umpire. I mean,
if the whole league ran those guys out there, guys

(28:12):
like him, there'd be very few arguments and you get
a really great result. So that's the first part about it.
And I wish him well because I don't know enough
about this, but if you're going to permit gambling in
any way, the ubiquitous nature of gambling right now, stuff
like this has to happen.

Speaker 3 (28:28):
It has to happen.

Speaker 2 (28:29):
Fay vincent I just just recently passed away specifically spoke
about how gambling could really if you see, if he's
gambling there, corruption's going to follow. You know, that's just
going to be there there. They're synonyms, they're they're bedfellows whatever.
So that's part of it, and that's not just that's it.
I really detest all the gambling going on, the obvious gambling,

(28:51):
the promotion of gambling. Who's promoting gambling? All that stuff
makes no sense to me. I'm sorry, it doesn't. When
you become bedfellows in this situation, you got to expect
like this to happen, and so that again, this is
just part of the raging fire probably, and this is
just one little spark that just emerged from that.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
So I feel bad for the guy.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
He is that good and hopefully something maybe down the
road can be straightened out with him. But the gambling
component of all this, and the fact that it's so
easy to do, pick up your device, gamble and you
see the advertisements on TV, really I find it repulsive.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
I do.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
I don't get it, and I think that's a really
big wrong that needs to be corrected. But whenever will
this Genie's never going back into bottle.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
Yeah, you're one hundred percent right, Joe. I mean, it
is a raging fire, we see. I mean, these things
are happening a lot now as a college basketball gambling
scandal going on. You see a lot. You know, every
sport is touched by this, and of course it's in
our face all the time, and it's become too easy,
you know, it's part of what we do now. We
normalize the abnormal. And to think that betting on games

(30:00):
is a normal activity for especially for young people, I mean,
it's ridiculous. It's it's a losing It literally is a
losing proposition, and yet it's thrown in our faces all
the time. You can't get away from it. It actually takes
away my enjoyment of sports. And I don't bet, but
the fact that it's in your face all the time
and everything is now individualized, that you know, I see

(30:23):
and hear more anger in the stands because people now
have money riding on the outcome of what the players do,
and they direct their anger and their angers at the players.
That's that's a fact. It's happening winter ball.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
You're talking about winter ball. That's been that way for years.
We always thought it was kind of cute and funny,
but you know, fans in the fanaticals in the Latin
America countries would bet in the stands, and there'd be
a lot of fights that would break out during the
course of games based on all this stuff was. It
was kind of quirky and cool down there because you
never really felt it here, and you just thought it

(30:57):
was part of the landscape there. And I just added
to the excitement long as nobody really got hurt, although
people did get hurt. Just a downgrading of deving behavior.
I mean, all of a sudden, what was the Devin
behavior before is now accept it normally, and we keep
going in that direction, and I just don't quite get it.
Grown up snow, you know the term grown up? Who
are the grown ups? Everybody's turning into adolescence. We just

(31:19):
somebody's got to put their foot downe And it's all
for the sake of money. And I understand that, but
I don't think that money just at all costs, like
at all costs of you know, giving ourselves up and
our structure up is worth it.

Speaker 3 (31:33):
It's not worth it.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
So it bothers me, man, you can tell by the
way I'm talking about it bothers me. I mean I
grew up in a small town where you know, you
have the number of runners and all this other stuff,
and it was something the other was betting going on
in the back room.

Speaker 3 (31:45):
At bell Hops bar.

Speaker 2 (31:48):
You know, the dudes will be hanging out back there,
they'd be betting on things, and I just playfully asked
what you got this week? That kind of stuff. But
I never bet, But I mean I it was almost
like that was almost like, okay, the way those guys
did it back there, because it was just a small
minority that would do it. It was kind of cool
to listen to their stories whatever. Okay again because it
was very small. But now it's just the ubiquitous snake

(32:11):
tri of it is really no good, and the technology
promoting it and the ease with which it's done, and
now you're bringing people down because of it. I just
don't like it.

Speaker 3 (32:20):
Joe.

Speaker 1 (32:20):
I thought about our book, moving on to our topic,
and a former MVP in the NFL, in our book,
the way you very eloquently described your levels of professionalism,
that level five player, all he want to do is win.
That's the guy you want as a manager, as a
coach on your team. And I thought about that because
Cam Newton, the quarterback, was on ESPN's first Take and

(32:43):
he was asked if he would give back his MVP
trophy for one super Bowl championship because he did not
win a super Bowl. And his answer directly no, he
would prefer to win an MVP then a super Bowl.
And he actually said that. He said, listen, Brad Johnson
won a super Bowl, Trent Dilfer won a super Bowl.

(33:03):
Respect Actually Nick Foles won a super Bowl. That's not
respectful by the way. You're downgrading those guys. And he
said people may disagree with them, but he ultimately wants
to be judged on what he accomplished and not what
anybody else on his team did. He said, I know
it's not a popular pick, but my take is I'm

(33:23):
taking individual success because I did my job. How about that?
That's not Patrick Mahomes.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
I give him credit for being honest. I really, that's
the number one I'm hearing all that. I'm okay with that.
That's honestly how he feels. But I could not disagree
with them more. I mean, that's just the way the
world works. Yeah, I could still consider him a friend
if I was if I knew the guy. But sure,
I do appreciate the honesty. I do, but for me,
individual achievement is nice. But if that's all you're chasing,

(33:52):
you're gonna come up. I mean, for me, I would
come up with an empty feeling all the time. It's
about the group achievement, it's about World Series rings. It's
about you know, at least getting there, even if you
don't want in. But the goal has always got to
be that. The individual stuff, you know, that's that's that's
all just nice. It's fluffy kind of stuff that the
things that really matter is winning it and winning it

(34:16):
as a grouper, as a team. As I'm saying, I
think like a golfer, but even golfers have teams these days.
But you know, the individual sports is just winning that.
They're still trying to win the championship. So there's no
greater goal.

Speaker 3 (34:30):
I don't think.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
Even as a kid, the State Trooper Eagles winning in
Hazelton I midget football, right, that was huge. The Mally
Maguire's our Teamers League baseball team winning the district title.
That was a huge thing. It's all relative. That was
our World Series, but nothing mattered more than that. I
can't tell that what I hit or how well I play,
but I could definitely tell you that we won and
we went it up in Squeersville. I could tell you

(34:51):
all that stuff.

Speaker 3 (34:52):
It was great.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
So I don't quite get that. I just think it's
a sign of the times. That's where we're at. It's
the individual branding, it's the the social media component of
all of this, it's the influencers. It's all these different
things that really points to me it's more of a
narcissistic method as opposed to the altruistic method, which you know, listen,
at the end of the day, I you know, I
want to do well for myself too.

Speaker 3 (35:14):
Of course I do.

Speaker 2 (35:15):
I want because I because if I do do well
for myself, then I'm going to benefit everybody else around me,
whether it's my family, whether it's my team, whether it's
you and I just doing our show right now. So
I appreciate his honesty, but it could not disagree with
them more.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
I agree with you one hundred percent. And I do
think it would have been very easy for him just
to give a boilerplate answer, you know, give it, providing
the answer that you think the questioner wants to hear.
And I give him credit that he did not do that.
He was true to his own convictions, And I agree
that what he is speaking here is symptomatic of a generation.
And you know I come from a different generation. You know,

(35:55):
we were raised on team sports, We were raised with humility.
Those things are not as important now. We talked about betting.
Way people follow sports now generally it's driven by individuals
and personalities more so than teams. So the world has changed.
This is just the reflection of that. But like you,
it doesn't mean I have to like it that that's

(36:16):
the way that it is, and I think there's still
room plenty room for that team first guy, that's how
championships are won.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
Well, you're talking about also the best in show. I
mean I've talked about this. I think I mentioned it here,
Like a lot of the way baseball showcase these days
were young guys coming up, like area code games.

Speaker 3 (36:33):
Whatever.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
The way the young baseball players are being taught right now,
it's not necessarily about we're talking about the team component.
They're just trying to become best in show and a
lot of that could be through technology or their own
personal coaches or trainers, whatever. They it's more important for
them to be considered the best out of this group
as opposed to the group winning at all just like

(36:56):
Newton's describing right there. So I absolutely believe in that.
I mean, I believe that that is true. I've known
it to be true. I've talked the people I recognize
this round the early twenty ten or so, into that
fifteen slot, I saw that becoming more of a thing
where the player was really more and so I'm not
going to mention the player's name, but he got to

(37:18):
the Rays and once he got there, he realized he
wasn't the best player on the team anymore. Man, that
really blew him up because he was no longer best
in Show and had to come at it a little
bit differently. And I think that's a lot of what
happens with a lot of the youth and how they're
raised today. And man, it's just it's tough. It's tough,
and I don't think it's an age thing. It's just

(37:39):
what is right and what is wrong kind of a thing.
So I would love to see us get back to
that somehow, I said, grown ups running things as opposed
to adolescents and getting away from best in Show, the
best team in show. I'm all about that. But I
just I've listened, I've witnessed it. It's exactly what's going on.

Speaker 1 (37:58):
I love it when you get ribbed up, Joe, and
I'm going to keep you ribbed up. We're going to
take a quick break, and when we get back, I'm
gonna throw some stats at you regarding our youth and
education that it's gonna get you revved up again. We'll
do that right after this. Well, Joe, I know you

(38:27):
care so much about education, our youths. And I came
across this in the New York Times, and maybe it's
not a surprise, but it's it's like one of these
I think alarms, wake up calls that we need every
once in a while, and we know what's going on,
but then when it's slammed in our face, we're like, man,
we have to do something. The percentage of eighth graders

(38:49):
who have below basic reading skills, it's the largest in
the three decades since they've been measuring these things. Thirty
three percent of eighth graders. One of every three eighth
graders has below back reading skills. This obviously is not good,

(39:10):
and this is I know people blame the pandemic on everything, right,
but these scores have been going down pre pandemic and
there was, And this is the obvious part to me, Joe.
There's a paper written by this guy named Nat Malchus.
He's an education researcher at something called the American Enterprise Institute,
and he points out that the clients in American children's

(39:32):
performance are echoed in tests of adults skills over the
same time period. So it's not just the kids. The
adults ain't reading either. So while we often look the
classrooms to understand why students are not learning more, some
of the causes and here's where the obvious point comes in,
may be attributed to screen time, cell phones, and social media.

(39:57):
He argues, the phone's ability to make our attention span
shorter and give kids less ability to stay focused is
quite likely coming home to roost.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
Me and Scotti, Harris Scotty's now the GM with the Tigers,
used to sit in my offices on the different road trips,
and I would bring that conversation up to him all
the time about the length of our ability to stand
on a particular subject anymore. And you know, obviously it
was because based on devices and technology, whether it's my iPad,

(40:30):
whether it's my iPhone, and whether it's the television itself
with Netflix and you know, Prime Video and all these
different services that really draw you away from sitting down
and really doing what you should be doing, and that's
reading a good novel, a great novel.

Speaker 3 (40:47):
I did that for years.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
I mean, I swear, I don't believe I could have
been as successful and my occupation had I not gotten
into the reading jag. Right about nineteen seventy four to
seventy five whatever that was, Uncle Chuck with the book
Centennial by James Mitchener started to be down at a
man that really, I think it really did it Jettis
and me to the point where I was able to

(41:09):
do the things that I did made me think differitely
made me think. Actually. When we started the Hailton Integration
Project a couple of years ago in Hazelton, PA, one
of the things I wanted in our program was speech
and debate. I thought that would be in our schools
today out of everything, because speech and debate would really

(41:33):
also doftail with reading. And that was another program I
tried to get don to Chicago. I wanted to do
something called Read fifteen. I wanted to challenge kids to
read fifteen minutes a night. We're going to send them
a nice little bookmark made out of a cow hide
from a baseball or whatever the height is these days.
But anyway, it was like read fifteen minutes a night
speech and debate club. Now I believe that in regardless

(41:58):
of whatever else you may want to study, if you could,
if you could think on your feet and present which
you think to whomever, and debate the subject at all,
and because you're well read, you're always employable. You will
absolutely whatever the job is that you're seeking. If you
could do those things, you're gonna impress somebody. You're gonna
impress somebody. They're gonna like, They're gonna like you, they

(42:19):
gonna like your personality of the fact you could carry
on the conversation, the fact that you have some depth
to you is all going to be present in that
whatever ten to fifteen minute moment where the interview occurs.
So I listen, there's another genie in a bottle kind
of thing, because I'm guilty. I mean, I read the
New York Post every morning, sitting right where I'm at
right now. But then I don't pick up a book
anymore because I have a hard time based on all

(42:42):
this training that has happened to me also between the
speed of the information that's coming across to me that
I'd read constantly, but not novels. And then at night
I just turned into Jerry Seinfeld reruns because I love it,
and it's just it's a great way to relax at night,
and not because I don't want to.

Speaker 3 (43:01):
I don't want to.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
I don't want to pay attention to something I have
to really watch, And a lot of this stuff is
so dark that's been put on at nights anywhere that
I don't want my mind to go there before I
go to sleep. So I would love for me personally
to reattach myself to the reading method that that chip
that I have within me that it'ves gone dormant. And
I would just love for kids and schools to understand

(43:24):
really speech and debate and emphasize reading.

Speaker 3 (43:27):
And I really believe you're going to.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
Get a much more well rounded student that's capable when
they leave your school. They're gonna be gonna be very
proud as an educator because that kid is can be
able to become employable almost everywhere, and he's also going
to advance his own education because of those skills alone.
That's what I think.

Speaker 1 (43:46):
Yeah, I know, I'm with you, and listen, Especially for
a kid, novels can be intimidating, you know, the length
of commitment that it takes. But it doesn't necessarily have
to be that. Just the act of reading reading articles,
you know, that's fine, But we're getting away as this
generation grows up with the ices in their hands from
the actual reading. They're just surfing for videos and I'm

(44:09):
not counting reading texts or tweets as reading. That certainly
is not.

Speaker 3 (44:14):
It.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
Just to give you an idea, Joe, with what the
below basic means. That means in eighth grade students who
are below basic, they can't determine the main idea of
a text, Like after reading a story, they can't identify
what the main idea was, and they can't identify different
sides of an argument or different sides of a proposition

(44:36):
within that text. I mean, it's scary, you know, as
years ago the singer Ani DiFranco said, you know, put
down those weapons of mass distraction. That's what they are.
Devices are weapons of mass distraction, and most people are
not even aware of how their brains are being hijacked.

(44:58):
We talked about the word of the year last year
in twenty twenty four. Brain rot, brain rot, which is
what what happens when you're just aimlessly scrolling on your device.
Use your time, better use your actual brain. You know.
It's like they say baseball with a fastball, use it
or lose it. And the same happens with critical thinking

(45:18):
with your brain. You have to challenge yourself by using
your own right brain rather than just exporting everything to
this hard drive. It's doing a thinking for you.

Speaker 3 (45:28):
Twenty sixteen.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
This really I could tell you dates on this one,
but twenty sixteen, after the World Series, I went back
to Lafayette, got my buddy Willie Span the B Street
band from the Jersey Shore to do a gig at
my fraternity at Lafayette at seta side that was we
went back for the Lehigh Lafayette football game night before,
band party, all this kind of stuff. I was expecting
it to be a lot like it had been, but

(45:50):
it wasn't. And Alison Byerley was the president of Lafayette
at that time, and I.

Speaker 3 (45:55):
Said, I really want to invite all the students.

Speaker 2 (45:57):
O I want all the students to come out to
the frat house and you know, experience a good old
time frat party encouraged me so much because she said,
we cannot get them to come out of their dorms.
They would not come out of the dorms. They would
just communicate via the devices there were. She was so
concerned with their inability to communicate with one another, just
carry on a normal conversation. These are pretty bright kids,

(46:20):
and they wouldn't do that. So I think we might
have garnered maybe a seventy five or one hundred person
audience for this really, and even Max Weinberg came out.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
He was a drummer that night.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
But she told me at that time, and that's why
I really started paying more attention to it.

Speaker 3 (46:34):
That's about ten years ago.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
The fact that the communication between students' kids at that
age and probably younger was primarily done via their thumbs
or their index fingers, whatever, the face to face getting
outside the socialization, real socialization as opposed to social media
very rarely occurs, and that was that was really bothering

(46:56):
her at that time. She's no longer at LAF yet,
But when she told me that, I have so much
paid more attention to it since then, because again I
was not part of my radar, but she put it
on my radar screen.

Speaker 1 (47:07):
Well, these are big topics, Joe. I'm not sure we
are changing the world, but we're at least calling attention
to something that I think obviously it does and you're
seeing now a little bit of I don't want to
call it backlash, but attention paid to these issues. Australia
is thinking about banning social media for kids succeed and under.

(47:28):
Some states are thinking now about and I think some
may do this banning cell phones throughout the school hours,
which makes all the sense in the world. By the way,
you just lock up your device like sometimes they do
at concerts, and then you pick it up at the
end of the day. What's so radical about that? But
we do have to now think about mitigating strategies to

(47:50):
have kids using their brains more.

Speaker 3 (47:52):
Well. I did want to do that with the Cubbies.

Speaker 2 (47:55):
I talked to Jason Hayward and he says, how about
and I never did it?

Speaker 3 (47:58):
Never fall through my fault. So what do you think.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
About if we pick one day, one day a week, whatever,
when y'all come into the ballpark, we get your cell phones,
we lock them up for the whole day. That was
part of it. The other part of it was I
was on the verge of getting a phone booth, and
real phone booth was on eBay out of somewhere in Texas.
I wanted to bring a phone booth into the locker

(48:22):
room at Sloan with a real phone in it that
actually worked. I don't even know if they existed anymore,
but that's what I wanted to do, so that if
in fact, you needed to use a phone on that
particular day, you had to go to the phone booth.
I just just to see, you know what the reaction
would be. Trying to make a point. Put this thing down.
Could you survive without he can't survive without it? You can't,

(48:45):
I mean you can't. I went to the golf the
other day. I forgot here. But there was a day
my mom was being operated on that kind of freaked
me out. So I didn't have this device to stay
in touch with my sister on the day Beanie was
being operated. Just of all days, I forgot my phone
and I felt so like a bad guy. I felt
like a bad person because I was not able to
stay in touch with my sister on that particular day.

(49:08):
Hurried back, got to the phone, because the part of
it is you don't know phone numbers, so you can't
even like call somebody on somebody else's phone. I don't
know their number. It's in my phone. So it was
a bad feeling, and I'm guilty. I'm guilty, So I'm
guilty of this. Also, I so wish that somehow I
could detach and maybe one of these days I'll figure

(49:28):
it out.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
How's Beanie doing, by the way.

Speaker 3 (49:31):
She's doing great.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
She fell broke a hip, had surgery that's about about
a month ago, almost right now, and she's already rehabbed
to the point where she's able to go back to
where the place she had been living the Laurels.

Speaker 3 (49:45):
And she's actually doing great.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
I think she's stronger now because she's really attacked the
rehab ninety two and attacking rehab.

Speaker 3 (49:51):
Cannot be more proud.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
That's great to hear. That is great to hear. Well,
we covered a lot of ground today on the Book
of Joe, and somehow, Joe, you always bring us home
with something appropriate, even not knowing what the topics is
going to be. What do you got teed up today?

Speaker 3 (50:06):
Got you?

Speaker 2 (50:06):
It's amazing. It's from Herman Melville. I mean, I don't
know this guy. You know Moby Dick, but one time
we've talked about this. In Moby Dick, he spoke about
the insular Tahiti that exists in all of us with
this place we go to when things get nuts and
you're able to like get to this point, whether it's
a thought of breath, whatever it might be that you

(50:29):
could focus on and cause you permit you to relax
kind of a thing. So this is one I don't
think I've used this before, but I love this one.
And he said it is better to fail an originality
than to succeed in imitation. I mean, everybody today wants
to be like everybody else, and god, even organizations, everybody

(50:52):
wants to be like somebody else. And they're always calling
the copycat component of it. If anybody's a little bit successful,
my goodness, somebody's gonna be on the phone with somebody
to try to find out what'd you do?

Speaker 3 (51:04):
How'd you get there?

Speaker 2 (51:06):
Everybody wants to imitate, and really the originality component to
me is really going nobody sits there and really ponders enough,
thanks enough. And again part of that is like the
we talked about this putting the ten thousand hours in
the Gladwell thing about really becoming efficient, proficient at something.

Speaker 3 (51:21):
So I love this.

Speaker 2 (51:24):
Yeah, I'd rather fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
Melville pretty sharp cat man. He wrote some good stuff,
and I really love that particular one.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
Yeah, be the best you, no question about it. I'll
go back to advice I got from Vince Scully. I
got a lot of advice from Vin Scully, but some
of the best advice he got. He was starting out,
and you know, as you know, Joe, and like any business,
you know, and broadcasting, you do try to copy people.
A lot of people do anyway, and Red Barber told him,

(51:56):
be you be the best version of Vin Scully. But
if you try to be me, you're going to be
a copy of me and not the best version of you.
The way Vince said it was, don't water your own wine,
you know, take advantage of your own uniqueness and individuality
and be the best version of you. So Herman Melville, that's,

(52:16):
by the way, that's not an easy book to get through. Yeah,
it takes some time. I would suggest starting if you're
getting back to your novel Jag, don't start there I'll
start with Herman, great stuff, Joe. We'll see you next time.
I have the Book of Joe.

Speaker 3 (52:31):
Thanks Buddy, nice job. The Book of.

Speaker 1 (52:40):
Joe podcast is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.